Metal-intoxication is a serious environmental and biological concern. Toxic metals are being increasingly deposited into water (surface, ground, and coastal), soil, and, inevitably, air and food. A major source of heavy metal introduction into the environment is attributed to industrial processes including automobile emissions, mining activities, battery manufacturing, fossil fuels, metal plating, and electronic industries. Not surprisingly this has resulted in significant biological and biomedical consequences. In fact, accumulation of iron, copper, and zinc in the body has been linked to neurodegenerative and psychological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, memory loss, seizures, and dementia. Additionally, a life-saving treatment for sickle-cell disease and thalassemia, the two most common hemoglobinopathies, is blood transfusion, a therapy that has several detrimental side effects, including iron overload. Various removal methods such as membrane processes, neutralization-precipitation, extraction, and ion exchange are useful.
However, development of more economical alternatives remains a major goal. Consequently, strategies to efficiently and selectively chelate heavy metal ions are an active area of research.